


To live would be an awfully big adventure

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, Self-Indulgent, Summary, Time Shenanigans, Tons of original characters who have no importance whatsoever, Warning : happy people, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy and Rory's story does not end in a graveyard, or even in Manhattan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To live would be an awfully big adventure

They live a life of safe quietness, assured about what will be, about what was. All their worries are for themselves, their jobs, their neighbourhood. But the world in shreds around them is not for them to pity. They know the outcome.

 

It is reassuring to know that the war will end, the world will heal and learn a little, that Europe will rise from its ashes and, yes, they tell some downcast German acquaintance, there is no doubt Germany will recover and lead a somehow unified Europe. The foretelling, they provide with caution, all too aware of their weight. It earns them a reputation of brightness, vision and strength, when they expected to become outcasts, cardboard British originals.

 

During the war, they both strive to be sent in Europe as soon as possible. Rory never witnesses the front line, so valuable a nurse is. Amy ends up in the South of France, where she organises shelter for the displaced families, who fled in panic before the German troops in 1940, whose lives were spilled on the dusty roads in long chaotic trails of belongings, vehicles, stamping feet. And children, everywhere, happy, lost, buoyant, weepy, young, condemned for some.

 

At the end of the war, they adopt Anthony. 5th October. The fourth time they both fell in love.

Amy finds hilarious the fact he bears the name of the roman emperor who courted and ended Cleopatra, Rory considers it a little disturbing. They didn't pick his name after all. Amy suspects River picked him for them though, because he's a gentle, patient, strong soul much like his father, with an uncanny resemblance to Brian.

 

Rory occupies a position in a private clinic for soldiers where his kindness and progressive ideas are highly considered. Amy becomes a writer; she had too much fun typing her daughter not to muck in herself. It's the golden age of the roman noir and the smoky detective story is a safe genre. Despite the expected lukewarm reception of her first Malone story, she writes her way up in small papers and arouses editors' curiosity. Her heroines particularly – the saucy Melody, the clever Rita and the classy Liz - are praised as modern women whose psychology is worth studying outside the popular genre.

 

It's her fifth novel, Like a moth to a flame, with its twist on the classic femme fatale figure and its bold description of female desire which catches the attention of the New York Times. With the money she earns from her successful weekly chronicle, she offers herself a course in sociology at a prestigious university and a gorgeous flat over Central Park. Rory becomes the clinic director in 1956, the only nurse to date in this position. Around that time, Anthony attempts to teach him baseball. Poor Rory could never understand those American games and retaliates with football.

 

They are not alone. They never expected to be. They have friends, plenty, from before the war, when they were still breaking their back to adapt, young couples then, anxious, uncertain, who settled down around them since. There are the other Williams, there are Pam and Jim, Trevor and Pat, Susie, Nan, Sam, Freddie, Josée and her kids, who followed Amy from Menton, Gertie Sondergaard, Aldrin Mackintosh, the Pages, the Seers, the Lavelles, even some SIP as Rory calls them, slightly more important people Amy met through her work at the Times.

 

And there's River.

 

She never gave up. She may not be able to see them, the time energy surrounding her, together with theirs, would cause the States to blow up, but she makes darn sure they are alright and not forgotten. First, when they arrived in New York in 1938, it was money and papers and the book. Then, there were little hints, such as 'Be at the Children's village. 5th October.' All in fading letters and dusty packages probably wrapped up at the turn of the century and usually dropped on them without warning by the most surprising characters. Once it was an old Italian prizefighter, another time a former silent film star. They are flooded with daguerreotypes or photographs of Brian and River in various places, America or elsewhere, mostly prior to their time. Their favourite is Brian photo bombing Howard Carter on the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. Funnily enough, it never showed up in their history books.

 

Themselves, they write to Brian and River and the Doctor, except they doubt the Doctor reads them. They write letters, little notes, one word billet Anthony or their friends will deliver. They even endeavour to play a prank on Augustus with the help of Amy's great aunt who happens to live in San Francisco. River, it seems, finds great pleasure in teaching her parents all of her tricks to communicate across time. They leave messages of love and hope, and smut sometimes, in the places they know their friends will visit.

 

As the mid-sixties get close, Amy becomes restless, Rory thinks it's the Flower Power taking over or the dread of being alone with him again after Anthony's move, but she laughs and silences him. Somewhere in America, there's an orphanage, a dark place haunted by monsters and rain. There's a little girl, she can't be saved. But she can be cared for, Rory tells her, from afar.

 

They ask River to send the only photo they have of Amy with Melody, a close up from Demon's run shot with a mobile phone. A little bribery and a suspicious looking Rory in a back alley are small prices to pay so that Doctor Renfrew makes sure the photograph is in her room. He's not a bad fellow and even provides them with snapshots of her. And sometimes they send toys, a teddy bear, a music box, a ballerina picture. Soon, she's lost and it's 1969.

 

Amy works herself into a frenzy in front of a colleague carrying a weapon. Anthony comes back from Broadway where he's struggling to become stage manager and they all spend a quiet holiday in the Rockies. There, they run into Greta Garbo, who is hilarious company and informs them she has been ordered to come here by her new physician, an outrageous woman with preposterously curly hair.

 

'River and Greta who?' becomes a family joke.

 

Their first grandchild is born in 1973 and Anthony doesn't fail to keep the Roman streak in the family, he names her Julia. Amy marks the occasion by publishing a storybook – The River bed – which bewitches the critics all over again and launches her second literary career. In the process of signing and presenting her books, she meets so many children dreaming of impossible ships she sometimes drives home half-drunk with joy.

 

When they are both retired, well in their seventies, and somewhat tired by their grandchildren, they retreat in the countryside. The time he has left is written in stone. Their haven is a little cottage designed by their future grandson's daughter, an architect, built by the short lived Malone Masonry Company in the 1920's. Time travel.

 

They have a cat, ruffled and a bit crazy, called Vincent and a clumsy llama going by the name of Doctor.

 

They are alone, but together, so far ahead in their lives. The way they lived, they didn't expect it.

 

'You know,' Rory says, 'back then, when we met the Dream Lord, I thought it was what I desired most, a life in the countryside, quiet. But I don't think it was enough. It is Eden-like here, alright, yet if I had had it then, it would have been empty, because we were, well, so young. So much to look forward to. Here, there's life and old friends and all those memories to fill me, to support me. I don't feel sad knowing my time is up soon.'

'You're silly, old sap, you would have had me,' she lets out a naughty chuckle, 'to fill everything.'

'Oh, maybe. I never imagine there was a possibility for you not to be there.'

 


End file.
